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School starts again in Columbia County this week, and that means changes for everyone – even folks who don’t have kids.

Thousands of pupils returning to classrooms means changes in traffic. You might find yourself sitting in an unusually crowded parking lot as you try to drop off your son or daughter at school. Regularly scheduled school buses might appear less regular.

So the Columbia County School District is asking for your patience. The number of car riders to school is expected to fluctuate, especially with new enrollees.

But the closest thing to fitting the bill is a special purpose local option sales tax, which Columbia County officials are using to construct a $9 million cultural center in Evans, a new library for the city of Harlem, a new radio-system for the county’s fire and rescue operation and upgrades to county parks and recreation facilities.

Sales taxes are one the least offensive and intrusive methods a county has to fund public developments and improve the community’s quality of life.

After every disaster, there’s a tendency for people to come together and decide what should be done to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.

But that collective response appears to be lacking regarding the inferno at the Marshall Square community, which gutted the $20-million-plus senior-living facility and claimed the life of one of its elderly residents last month in Evans.

The construction-zone messages are directed at motorists navigating the expanding network of suburban roads, but they could just as easily serve as a warning to county leaders mapping out the region’s growth during the next couple of decades.

That Columbia County is growing is not a surprise – that’s been the story for more than 30 years now.

A few months ago, there was no small amount of grumbling when the Columbia County Board of Education moved to require all school supporter organizations to run their finances through each school’s bookkeeper.

More than 60 percent of those organizations, such as PTOs and booster clubs, were already in compliance, and school officials at the time said there was no specific problem prompting them to bring the rest of the groups into the fold. They said at the time, however, that there were several problems in the system that the change could fix.

Rachael Cundey’s streak of five victories in her school-level spelling bees, the Columbia County bees and the regional bees not only is unprecedented, but unlikely to be matched. As she enters high school next year and leaves her spelling bee eligibility behind, she leaves winning records that will stand as a monument to education, intellect and hard work.

We’re pretty confident that if you turn on the television tonight and tomorrow and tune in ESPN3 or ESPN2, you’ll see a genuine local celebrity: Rachael Cundey.

The rising Lakeside High School freshman this week is competing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The bee had elimination rounds Tuesday and today, but you’d be making a safe bet that Cundey will be in the finals.

On a weekend as nearly 1,600 graduates picked up diplomas from Columbia County public and private schools, there are plenty of reasons to worry that there weren’t as many students graduating as there should have been.

Evidence of those reasons come from the Georgia Department of Education, which this past week released the annual tally of graduation rates for all schools in the state.

Overall, Georgia’s rate increased by two percentage points. That’s progress, but it’s still lower than it should be. At 69.7 percent, that’s a failing grade.

Each year as the school year ends, thousands of students are turned loose to summer vacation. Many of them are kept in daycare facilities, or enrolled in camps or participate in other organized activities.

But many are left alone while their parents work, and far too many of them wind up looking for – and finding – mischief. Typically, the number of juvenile complaints rises during the summer as kids have more time and fewer people are watching them.

As the Columbia County school year winds to a close and seniors prepare for commencement exercises next weekend, it signals the end of an era.

And no, we’re not just talking about the retirement of School Superintendent Charles Nagle, though he’s largely responsible for the significant change that’s coming with the closure of Bel Air Elementary School.